Wednesday, May 26, 2010

A Garden

Around this time last year, we had a fence put in with our neighbors. We had talked about getting a fence since the day we bought the house, but hadn’t yet moved forward. Our neighbors decided to put one in (our theory now is to keep us out, but good fences make good neighbors, so we really don’t care) and we split the cost of one side. Getting a fence meant that we would be able to get another dog, put in the doggie door and give Otis some more freedom. In getting everything ready, we actually got the the neighbors rocks that were on our property moved. Thus leaving a 40 ft x 4 ft plot just perfect for a garden!

Last summer, after the fence went in, Rocky got some wood to mark off the garden and that’s about as far as we got. It was late in the season and as Montana has a very short growing season, we wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it anyway.

This year when Rocky’s folks came out at Easter, Mike filled up our bed with dirt and brought us a tiller and wheelbarrow. Rocky divided up the bed into 4 ft sections. We hit the garden center last weekend and got some plants and some seeds. Maggie had a lot of fun helping and did a good job. We planted tomatoes, 3 different peppers, onions, broccoli, cucumbers, carrots, squash, pumpkins, watermelon and quite a few different flowers.

Now, here we are 10-12 days later and we actually have seeds SPROUTING! The cucumber and lettuce seeds are really coming up strong. We’ve gotten some good rain and the garden gets a lot of strong sun. In a few weeks (or maybe sooner) we’ll have to thin out the growth a bit, but I think we’re going to have a great crop this fall. And hopefully Maggie will enjoy all parts of gardening.